Sunday, October 25, 2015

October 19, 2015

Kaibeto, Arizona

(Note to the family, but such a description of rain--just wanted to include this)
I am so proud of all of the wins this week, especially the doughnuts! (Kuna and Aggie football wins--family won a huge platter of doughnuts from the Troop 183 auction)
This week has been good, I am overcoming a small stomach sickness but
all is well. It is really starting to cool down in Kaibeto, in fact last
night there was a huge storm. Now normally rain helps me sleep better at
night, but not this time. This was one of the heaviest rains I have
ever seen, and on our metal roof it was equivalent to the sound you
experience when you are standing at a railroad crossing as a train zooms
by. Well I have got to go I just thought I would shoot an email to the
family while I could. Love you guys!

October 19, 2015

Kaibeto, Arizona

Not much to say this week. We have been getting a ton of referrals
this week. The turn around in Kaibeto these past few weeks has been
awesome! As seems to be the normal in this mission we have been working
with a ton of Less-Active members and this week we had quite a few come
to church this week. That was great. In a couple of weeks we will be
helping to make the "Haunted Forest" at the church, that will be fun.
This week I went on exchanges with the Zone-Leaders in Page. We had a
great time. Oh we now have one more Elder with them, it is now a trio of
Elders. Elder Peterson, Elder Hancock, and the new one Elder Houston.
They are a lot of fun. We had a wonderful zone conference this week, I
was able to learn a lot. This week I will be going on another exchange
with the Elders in Echo Cilffs, or Bitter Springs, and doing a baptismal interview out there. That area is really booming. I am very
proud of my district. Well that's it for this week.

October 12, 2015

Kaibeto, Arizona

This was a good week. Today we got to tour the Glen Canyon Dam. The one
that holds back Lake Powell. But this was no ordinary tour, it was a
special tour that a member who work as the head of security for the Dam
took us on personally. We got to go to places that normal people don't.
Before hand we had to have a background check as well, that was an
interesting thing to know you were having done on your mission. Well
things are going great in Kaibeto! This week was some of the highest
numbers that the area has had for at least 2 years. Tomorrow is Zone
Conference in Tuba City, it will be fun to go back again. Hopefully I
will get to see some members from Polacca randomly in Tuba City.
Saturday was pretty awesome, If you remember from last week the girl
that I interviewed for baptism... Well she was a baptized, and I had the
priviledge to do that. It was an awesome experience to do that, and
also to get into water again. (; Well I can't believe that this transfer
is already half-way over. It has gone by very fast. This week we picked
up some more people that we have began to teach

(That was the end of the e-mail--then a few minutes later the rest came.)

It's not finished yet!!!!!

they are great! Oh
Happy Columbus Day, by the way. No one here seems to care about it, but
last year people were angry about it. Some refused to honor it because
it was the beginning of the white men in America. Well now I think that I
am finished.

Tune in next week for another marvelous Adventure of Elder Warnick

Okay they are as follows

Observation Point, from a restricted area

If you can guess I kind of enjoyed this tour

in the generator room, people are usually only allowed to look from the out side but are not allowed in here

view from the bottom

Into the canyon wall, not allowed here

Secret Places

On the side of the dam, restricted

Our guide touching the generator shaft

Maybe some day I will take a selfie without awkwardly opening my mouth.

October 5, 2015

Kaibeto, Arizona

8:40 p.m. (Super late for the normal missionary e-mail)

Yes I am alive! The details will be coming soon, just give me a few minutes to try to explain what went down today... (:

9:27 p.m.

Okay so here is the scoop for today. It all started last night when we
decided to climb Navajo Mountain again. It sounded like a wonderful
idea. We stayed the night with the Inscription House Elders and our
plans were as follow.

5:00 wake up

6:00 drive to mountain

7:00 arrive and begin hiking

9:00 summit the mountain and begin studying

11:00 begin down

1:00 finish hike and drive home

3:00 arrive home and email

4:00 dinner

5:00 drive to Page

6:00 baptismal interview for page sister's investigator

7:30 arrive home and teach a lesson.

Well this is how the day went.

5:00 wake up and realize it is raining

6:00 breakfast

7:00 breakfast

9:00 decide that the sky has cleared up enough and drive to mountain

10:00 begin hike

12:00 realize that where we went last time was not nearly as close to the top as we thought (only half-way)

12:10 decide we still have time...

1:00 decide that it is only half an hour to the top.

1:30 realize we were wrong

2:00 walk into a cloud

2:15 get hit by a huge rain storm (that made us fear for our lives)

2:45 summit. Couldn't see anything because of the storm we were in...

3:50 reach bottom and begin our way home

5:00 get home and change clothes

5:15 drive to Page

6:00 baptismal interview for page sister's investigator

7:30 arrive home and have a lesson cancel on us...

7:35 email and dinner

Yeah
it was all because of bad planning on our part, poor time judgement,
and the storm (which we only got hit by because of our poor judgement).

Lots was learned today. Won't be getting near that mountain for a long time.

So the week since Thursday... has not bee too eventful. We had weekly
planning in Friday and then general Conference on Saturday and Sunday. I
learned so much from conference this time around, there is just
something special about conference when you are a missionary. The
baptismal interview that I did today was wonderful. It was my first time
interviewing someone for baptism and it was quite a special experience
for me. I interviewed a young girl named Shandriana. She was so sweet
and she was so nervous that she wouldn't be able to remember the things
that she had been taught. Burt she did wonderfully. She is 9 and has a
wonderful spirit about her.

Ready For Round 2

Beautiful Day

Into the Clouds

Also this week is the first of the month and since
people got paid on of our faithful members bought us $30 worth of
shrimp. WOW. We are very grateful for Virginia.

October 1, 2015

Kaibeto, Arizona

Well I am finally emailing. Things have been great in Kaibeto. The work
is progressing and we have some people who are right on the edge of
finally becoming investigators, they are just never home... Well one of
these people is Kendrick. She, yes she, has a lot of interest in the
gospel and seems to really want to know. For a long time she has been
trying to figure things out with her life and now she feels good that we
are there to teach her. She minored in religion in college so she knows
a lot and is quite fun to teach. Elder Emery is a swell guy. We have
been together for just over a week now and he is loving it. He is a very
prepared missionary, he has studied a lot and really wants to do his
best. He wants to be a seminary/institute teacher so he loves the
gospel. Another fun thing, he is a thrower. This week we started so
children of less-active families and are trying to help prepare them for
baptism, I can see the desire to come back to the gospel in their
families eyes as we teach. I hope that you all are preparing to hear
from the servants of the Lord, this coming weekend is general conference
and it will be a blast. This week is kind of a missionaries dream week
with a temple trip AND general conference so close together. I had a
great time on Monday going to Monticello and back. We went with our
Bishop and drove through Monument Valley on the way, which is where he
spent 13 months of his mission. Then we drove through one of my old
areas, Bluff it was fun to see everything again. Well it is time to go.
Talk to you again soon.

September 22, 2015

Kaibeto, Arizona

Well my new companion is named Elder Emery, he is from Salt Lake. Will tell you more next week.

(the
following is an answer to a request from Melissa (Mom). The Kuna 5th
Ward Primary is highlighting a missionary serving from the ward the last
Sunday of every month so that the Primary children can learn more about
missionary work and get to know the missionaries from K5 better. So
Elder Warnick sent a little story that can "help the Primary children
prepare for missions.")

Okay so here is my story for Primary and it is about being Positive.

There
have been times on my mission when it has not looked very good. The
area was struggling and other times when it was hard to get along with
my companion. We had a big missionary meeting a couple of months ago and
we were taught about always staying positive. I tried this. Instead of
looking at the things that were negative, bad and sad we tried to look
at all of the good things that we were doing.

We were given a piece of
paper that had 2 columns of lines one side was called; 'NEGATIVE
THOUGHTS I'VE HAD TODAY" and the other side was called "POSITIVE
THOUGHTS". The challenge was to write down all of the bad things that we
thought and to change it into a good thought.Well, as I did this I could
see my attitude changing and also the way that I was looking at things.

Instead of being sad and down and thinking, "Why do we have to ride out
bikes everywhere? No body is even home."

It changed into, "I am so happy
that I can get some fresh air and exercise and try to share the gospel
with other people that Heavenly Father loves."

The sadness changed to
happiness and the rejection turned into hope that we can help someone
else. This works at home too, not just as a missionary. When you are sad
just think of all of the good things that you do have. When you are
fighting with a brother or sister, think about something that you guys
did together that made you laugh. Try it out and you will have an even
happier day.

I don't know how long this was supposed to be but here was a try...

(It was an great story. The children were totally silent and listened intently as Melissa shared this with them.)

September 21, 2015

Kaibeto, Arizona

Some of the weeks
developments. Well this will be my 8th companion in 7 transfers. I will
be Training and a District Leader this transfer. So another companion
and a little more responsibility. This came as no shock to me this week,
because President has previously told me that I would most likely be
training this transfer and since Elder Butterfield is going to Australia
today there was an opening for district leader. So our Zone will now be
as follows.

Kaibeto: Me-13 months...trainee

Inscription House: Elder Rainey-6 weeks...trainee

Lechee: Elder Williams-6 weeks...trainee

Echo Cliffs: Elder Ericson-6 weeks... trainee

Page Sisters: Sis Navarro-13 months...Sis Meza- 6 weeks

Page ZL: Elder Hancock-15 months... Elder Peterson 18 months.

#YoungestZoneEver

I
found out that Polacca is getting closed this transfer. That is pretty
sad, I served the first 6 months of my mission there and
loved it, so a special part of me is dedicated to the Hopi people. It
would be cool to go back in a transfer or 2 and re-open Hopi, but all
that I can do is pray for them.